Keyboard for accompaniment for



Aug. 4, 1936. w. HINTERMEYER KEYBOARD FOR AGCOMPANIMENT FOR HAND ACCORDIONS AND SIMILAR MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Filed March 7, 1935 jay-3 I,

Ziff O i? Patented Aug. 4, 14936 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE CAL INSTRUMENTS Willy Hintermeyer, Munich, Germany Application March 7, 1935, Serial No. 9,895 In Germany March 22, 1934 2 Claims.

With the buttonand piano-accordions o-f the usual kind the complete major, minor and dominant seventh-chord are coupled and to be played by operating one single button or key. Advantageous though it may appear at the first glance, its effect is disadvantageous in several respects, above all in as far as up to button keys are required for the different chords.

The instrument does not only become voluminous and heavy thereby, also the playing of it is rendered diicult and moreover the price of the instrument is increased considerably. The main fault, however, is that in spite of the many keys and voices a polyphonic playing is impossible, since the single voices have been coupled to entire chords for which very reason it is impossible to play any single Voice by itself.

Contrary to the known constructions of this kind, the number of keys is reduced considerably according to the present invention and each component of a chord is made playable singly, whilst all chords occurring can be executed easily and conveniently.

This is achieved by the button keys or the like in the rows placed in relation to one another being arranged in a relation of community of chords in such a manner that two adjacent tones each form components of a major, minor or dominant seventh-chord, which may be played with one nger according to requirements.

A further advantagey for the manner of playing is gained by the button-keys of two rows each being provided with an extension of the keypressing-surface on the side facing each adjacent row, so that these extensions of the keysurfaces work into one another in one plane.

An arrangement of this kind is illustrated in the attached drawing, in which,-

Figure l is a diagrammatic view of a portion of a key-board.

Figs. 2 an-d 3 are diagrammatic views showing the major and minor fingering, respectively, and

Fig. 4 is a diagrammatic View illustrating the fingering for the dominant seventh-chord.

In this gure the circles drawn with broken lines represent round keys forming in their order the basses. The specially formed button-keys represented by fully drawn lines show the arrangement of the voices of accompaniment. 5 Owing to this arrangement two tones of a major, minor or dominant seventh-chord come to lie beside each other in every instance, as may be seen from the inscriptions.

Fig. 2 shows the major fingering which remains l0 the same, Fig. 3 the minor fingering, and Fig. 4 the fingering fo-r the dominant seventh-chord.

It is evident from Fig. 1 that due to the peculiar shape of the button-keys two keys may easily be operated with one finger, whereby the manner of l5 playing is facilitated considerably as compared with round button-keys.

For playing gurate accompaniment and melodious tone-scales the individual tones are likewise favorably situated. Also all the other chords 20 may be performed with the same facility and the corresponding basses may be added comfortably to the chords.

What I claim is:

1. Keyboard for hand accordions and similar 25 musical instruments comprising a plurality of keys arranged in echeloned horizontal rows with whole tone keys for bass accompaniment in the front row and the second row, and bass keys arranged in the third and fourth rows from the 30 front, and with obliquely extending four-key groups of the echelon each comprising two pairs each consisting of an accompaniment key and a bass key of similar note but an octave lower, the horizontal rows of accompaniment or whole tone 35 keys containing seventh interval keys.

2. Keyboard according to claim 1 in which the bass accompaniment keys in the front and second rows are provided at the sides between the two rows with extensions which interlace with each other in one plane in such a manner as to facilitate simultaneous depression of at least two adjacent keys by one finger.

WILLY HIN'I'ERMEYER. 

